


find me a way (I'll be yours in a landslide)

by clarewithnoi



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Family Feels, Family Fluff, I love baby harry, Light Angst, Potters in Hiding, Short One Shot, seriously this is all just feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 04:00:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28950048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarewithnoi/pseuds/clarewithnoi
Summary: Lily thinks she would know his smile even if she lost her sight.An ode to the Potters.
Relationships: Harry Potter & James Potter & Lily Evans Potter, James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Comments: 18
Kudos: 65





	find me a way (I'll be yours in a landslide)

**Author's Note:**

> hi I just published something humorous so my brain wanted to know if I could write something heavy too, I guess, lol
> 
> title is from Novo Amor's "State Lines," which is one of my all-time favorite songs.
> 
> *** SHOUTOUT to Lilmint for reminding me to put the quote that inspired this at the end oMG
> 
> enjoy!

_I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light_ _  
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,  
count themselves out, at too early an age._

Adrienne Rich, “From an Atlas of a Difficult World”

* * *

Lily thinks she would know his smile even if she lost her sight. Even if she couldn’t touch him, in fact; if she couldn’t reach out to feel the curvature of his lips, the soft architecture of his cheekbones as his face shifts with the motion, chin tilting upward and eyes crinkling. She would know his smile if all she could do was listen to him as he spoke, because she’d know the shapes of his words as they leave his lips and caress the surface of her skin. 

When he smiles, they’re rounder, velvety and silky and downy to the touch. When he frowns—on those rare occasions—they’re sharper and thinner, razorblades and daggers, jagged with teeth; serrated.

But she’d know James’s smile if she lost her hearing, too, she thinks. Even then, in the harsh silence, she’d feel the warm glow on her skin, like arms around her shoulders. She’d know it in eerie solitude; she’d know it lost in a crowd.

Harry has James’s smile—of this, she’s been sure since the day he was born. She knew it when she laid her eyes on him for the first time, this perfect, bouncy baby boy, this summer afternoon. She could see it through the blushing roundness of his cheeks. The first time he laughed—so soon after being born, like he’d been waiting for laughter those nine months in her belly—she saw the familiar crookedness, that harbinger smile of sunlit days. It’s no wonder he was a summer baby, with that smile; she clutches him at her chest and wonders if she’ll ever feel cold again.

“He’s a good sleeper,” James remarks as he walks into the living room, “never makes a fuss, our boy.”

“He gets that from you, you know,” she replies. It’s true, and not just because James sleeps so heavily, but because Harry tires himself out with play to the point that naptime is a welcome reprieve—he’s an active mind, unable to sit still, like his father. But he’s inquisitive like her, and she’s never loved her eyes as much as when she sees them reflected in his.

James sits down on the sofa next to her. His chin tilts a little lower than it used to, back in Hogwarts, but his shoulders have yet to sag or slouch. She envies him sometimes; his fatigue is unfamiliar to him, uncomfortable. It’s the new weariness of someone who’s only just been disappointed by the world.

Lily feels an arm stretch around her shoulders, sinuous, long and lean and heartrending. It makes its way around her whole body, like she’s small enough to fit; like it’s no trouble to wrap himself—a piece of him, but still, _himself_ —around her. She leans in. Harry breathes deeper, still fast asleep. She has half a mind to wake him, although for what reason he wouldn’t understand at so young, would just look up with those big, green eyes and that little, crooked smile: _hi, mama._ Like it’s normal, because to him it is, it’s all he knows, when to her he’s still a little miracle, and every breath he takes feels like it comes straight from her chest.

She wants to see his eyes again, just one more time, just to make sure they still match her own. She has half a mind to wake him, but she resists, settling back into James’s side.

“He’s so beautiful,” James whispers. The words wobble as they hit her, shaky, trembling; his voice is an earthquake. She turns to look at him and finds him blinking behind his glasses. His cheeks are wet, but he’s been careful not to lean too far over her. He didn’t want any tears to hit the baby.

“He has your smile,” she says. _I know it more than I know myself_. _I’ve memorized every version._

She feels him wipe a hand over his eyes, clearing the moisture. He does it with his left hand; his right rests on her shoulder, unmoving. Harry shifts slightly, squirming, as if aware of their attentions, curling tiny fingers around a blue blanket that she picked out a week before he was born. She could tell it was his favorite from the first time he touched it.

She knows him, too, like a part of herself, every strand of hair and tiny, emerging freckle, catalogued in her mind, infallible and unrepentant. She’ll know him for the rest of her life, and for his; even when she's gone. She thinks she’ll know him even in death. He has his father’s smile.

* * *

_I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world._

Madeline Miller, _The Song of Achilles_


End file.
